So I decided to go for a walk. I was drunk and miserable and I hadn't left the flat in days and I needed to get away from the place, get away from my thoughts for a while, so I put a can of beer in each of the four pockets of my jacket and went out for a stroll. I had no plan, no direction, I just let my feet take me where they fell. Rain had drenched the city all day but had stopped by the time I went out; the night air was still damp though, and the streets were all glossy under orange streetlights. I soon found myself in a scheme somewhere, basking in the light from the windows glowing warm in the dark. There was something comforting about the way the windows glowed, it's difficult to explain, but I remember doing this as a child and finding it beautiful and peaceful, especially when it snowed, but of course it hardly ever snows now.
I kept walking, tumbling I suppose, with no idea where I was or where I was going. That's the thing with the city, there's always somewhere you don't know, somewhere you haven't found yet, and it seemed to make sense to just keep moving. Eventually I found myself in a posh-looking, leafy street lined with huge 4- or 5-bedroom houses with well-kept gardens and unnecessarily powerful cars parked on gravel drives. There was a lot of noise coming from one of the houses, they were having a party, and I peeked into the front-room window from the end of the drive. Everyone looked so happy, so I decided to join them.
A woman answered the door and made it easy for me. 'Oh, you must be Daniel's friend,' she said, 'Do you know that he's already left? He said to tell you he's sorry but he had to go. Sean, isn't it?'
'Aye,' I lied. 'That Daniel, he's always leaving me like this.'
'Well, you're here now,' she says, 'So you might as well come in for a drink and enjoy yourself. Here, I like your trousers!'
I'd forgotten I was wearing my stripy pyjama bottoms - I'd left the flat in a drunken hurry with no thought to my outfit. The woman led me into the house. She looked around forty maybe and she was very pretty except for the weird blonde wig she had on. When I entered the massive living room, it was clear it was someone's birthday: there were balloons all over the floor and tied to lights and picture frames, party popper debris everywhere, paper plates with forgotten finger-food and the last scraps of a cake on the table, lying next to a display of cards addressed to Hilary, some with the number 16 on them. The room was full, you could barely move for guests, and I soon got talking to whoever was standing next to me. I stayed in that room for a while, enjoying my new life as Sean, chatting about the mysterious Daniel and what I did for a living. It was obvious that no-one really knew Sean, so I was free to invent him. He drove an ice-cream van, which I thought was pretty cool; he was found as a baby on the doorway of a church in Melbourne, Australia, but was adopted at the age of two by Scottish parents. I made it up as I went along, not caring about contradicting myself because I knew I'd never speak to these people again. I almost started to feel guilty after a while, everyone was so nice and friendly and I genuinely enjoyed their company and I was having a great time, but then again maybe I was just enjoying my ludicrous lies.
Eventually, I got talking to the birthday girl. She was tall with long and scruffy light brown curls all the way down past her chest, beautiful eyes but I don't remember the colour - sometimes I think blue, sometimes brown, maybe even green. We started chatting about something, anything, probably nothing. She was very open, enthusiastic and chatty, and soon we started talking about music. We seemed to share similar tastes and she said she had this great new record that she wanted me to hear and that I should come to her bedroom and give it a listen. I'd already heard it but I pretended I hadn't, not that it matters - she never got round to putting it on. As soon as the bedroom door was closed, she kissed me. Just turned round and gave me a gentle wee kiss on the lips, testing the waters, waiting for a reaction. Of course, I kissed her back. I probably should have hesitated, thought about it - she was only sixteen - but I was feeling bold and reckless. I can't imagine what attracted her to me. Maybe I was just the exotic stranger of the party, a bit dirty and mysterious and eccentric; the weird, orphaned Ice-Cream Man in his pyjamas. We didn't go far, in fact we didn't do much at all. We kissed and touched but went no further, overly intimate in that way you can only really have with a stranger.
I woke a couple of hours later with Hilary in my arms and I could hear the party still going strong a few rooms away. I rolled her over gently and got out of bed. She seemed to be asleep but was probably pretending, trying to avoid any awkwardness. I lifted my unusually heavy jacket from the floor - it was still loaded with beer, I hadn't even touched them thanks to an endless supply of free punch - then I quietly left the bedroom.
I popped back into the party room to say goodbye. I found the woman with the wig, who I suppose was Hilary's Mum, and I told her I'd had a lovely time but I had better be off, and she gave me a sly look as though she knew what I'd been up to. Then she took off her wig to reveal auburn curls and looked in my eyes. She was really drunk and placed the wig on my head, pulled it down to tighten it, obviously amused by how it looked. 'It's been lovely to meet you, Daniel's friend,' she said and gave me a kiss on the lips. She ran her hand down my cheek and grinned an alcohol grin in a flirty but innocent way, like when the older woman in the shop calls you darling or love. I said, 'Thanks for having me, I'll be sure and let Daniel know what a brilliant night you've shown me,' kissed her again on the cheek and left.
I still had no idea where I was. I opened a can of beer and just headed in the first direction my feet saw fit to take me. I kept the wig on because it was starting to rain.
When I woke up again, I was at a bus stop. My forehead was stuck to the glass of the shelter - I was sitting upright in the corner with my head against it. The first thing I saw was the ground where four empty beer-cans lay, then I noticed that my mobile phone was lying next to them, face down with the battery cover and battery missing, nowhere to be seen. My first thought was sheer panic - my whole life was in that phone. Remember, this was a while ago, somewhere in my mid-twenties, long before I had a computer or broadband and an email address. I didn't even have a land-line at home because it was an unnecessary expense and besides, I wasn't really at home that much anyway. As I picked it up to find the screen all scratched, the old woman I hadn't noticed asked, 'You had a good night, son?' She was sitting beside me on the bench in the bus shelter. 'The bus to Glasgow will be here any minute, if that's where you're going,' she said, and all I could muster through my dry throat was a croaky 'Aye, cheers.' There was a little awkward silence before the bus arrived and, ever the gentleman, I let the old dear on first. When I got up to the driver, I realised I didn't have any money - there's no pockets in my pyjama trousers and all I'd had in my jacket was beer, phone and keys. As if that wasn't bad enough, I caught sight of my vague reflection in the glass of the driver's booth and noticed my odd-shaped head - I was still wearing the wig. I yanked it off quickly then tried to plead my case, explained how I'd been stranded at a stranger's house in my pyjamas, but I needn't have bothered. Before I reached the end of my plea, the old woman had walked back up, bus-fare in hand, saying 'Here you go, driver, I'll get this,' and she paid my fare. I looked her in the eyes and said sincerely, 'Thank you, thank you, this is really good of you and I don't know what to say.'
'Just you get yourself up the road and get some sleep, son,' she said and went back to her seat. I stumbled right up the back and sat down, embarrassed and humble, lost for words.
The bus took me to Buchanan Station so I made the walk down to Queen Street to get the train out to the flat. As I was walking, in the distance, I couldn't believe it at first but there she was: my ex-girlfriend. She was stumbling and shaky, obviously still drunk from a night out, just like me. I wanted to shout out, run and catch up with her or even just somehow let my presence be known, let her see me in the same state, pretend that I was doing okay. But I decided against it, in fact I even took a slight detour to avoid her, I don't know why.
When I got home, I went straight to the bedroom and stripped then slid into bed, pulling up the extra cover to keep me cosy. As I drifted off, I was thinking about my weird night and how I was looking forward to telling all my mates all about it when I woke up. And then I remembered my phone was f*****.
I kept walking, tumbling I suppose, with no idea where I was or where I was going. That's the thing with the city, there's always somewhere you don't know, somewhere you haven't found yet, and it seemed to make sense to just keep moving. Eventually I found myself in a posh-looking, leafy street lined with huge 4- or 5-bedroom houses with well-kept gardens and unnecessarily powerful cars parked on gravel drives. There was a lot of noise coming from one of the houses, they were having a party, and I peeked into the front-room window from the end of the drive. Everyone looked so happy, so I decided to join them.
A woman answered the door and made it easy for me. 'Oh, you must be Daniel's friend,' she said, 'Do you know that he's already left? He said to tell you he's sorry but he had to go. Sean, isn't it?'
'Aye,' I lied. 'That Daniel, he's always leaving me like this.'
'Well, you're here now,' she says, 'So you might as well come in for a drink and enjoy yourself. Here, I like your trousers!'
I'd forgotten I was wearing my stripy pyjama bottoms - I'd left the flat in a drunken hurry with no thought to my outfit. The woman led me into the house. She looked around forty maybe and she was very pretty except for the weird blonde wig she had on. When I entered the massive living room, it was clear it was someone's birthday: there were balloons all over the floor and tied to lights and picture frames, party popper debris everywhere, paper plates with forgotten finger-food and the last scraps of a cake on the table, lying next to a display of cards addressed to Hilary, some with the number 16 on them. The room was full, you could barely move for guests, and I soon got talking to whoever was standing next to me. I stayed in that room for a while, enjoying my new life as Sean, chatting about the mysterious Daniel and what I did for a living. It was obvious that no-one really knew Sean, so I was free to invent him. He drove an ice-cream van, which I thought was pretty cool; he was found as a baby on the doorway of a church in Melbourne, Australia, but was adopted at the age of two by Scottish parents. I made it up as I went along, not caring about contradicting myself because I knew I'd never speak to these people again. I almost started to feel guilty after a while, everyone was so nice and friendly and I genuinely enjoyed their company and I was having a great time, but then again maybe I was just enjoying my ludicrous lies.
Eventually, I got talking to the birthday girl. She was tall with long and scruffy light brown curls all the way down past her chest, beautiful eyes but I don't remember the colour - sometimes I think blue, sometimes brown, maybe even green. We started chatting about something, anything, probably nothing. She was very open, enthusiastic and chatty, and soon we started talking about music. We seemed to share similar tastes and she said she had this great new record that she wanted me to hear and that I should come to her bedroom and give it a listen. I'd already heard it but I pretended I hadn't, not that it matters - she never got round to putting it on. As soon as the bedroom door was closed, she kissed me. Just turned round and gave me a gentle wee kiss on the lips, testing the waters, waiting for a reaction. Of course, I kissed her back. I probably should have hesitated, thought about it - she was only sixteen - but I was feeling bold and reckless. I can't imagine what attracted her to me. Maybe I was just the exotic stranger of the party, a bit dirty and mysterious and eccentric; the weird, orphaned Ice-Cream Man in his pyjamas. We didn't go far, in fact we didn't do much at all. We kissed and touched but went no further, overly intimate in that way you can only really have with a stranger.
I woke a couple of hours later with Hilary in my arms and I could hear the party still going strong a few rooms away. I rolled her over gently and got out of bed. She seemed to be asleep but was probably pretending, trying to avoid any awkwardness. I lifted my unusually heavy jacket from the floor - it was still loaded with beer, I hadn't even touched them thanks to an endless supply of free punch - then I quietly left the bedroom.
I popped back into the party room to say goodbye. I found the woman with the wig, who I suppose was Hilary's Mum, and I told her I'd had a lovely time but I had better be off, and she gave me a sly look as though she knew what I'd been up to. Then she took off her wig to reveal auburn curls and looked in my eyes. She was really drunk and placed the wig on my head, pulled it down to tighten it, obviously amused by how it looked. 'It's been lovely to meet you, Daniel's friend,' she said and gave me a kiss on the lips. She ran her hand down my cheek and grinned an alcohol grin in a flirty but innocent way, like when the older woman in the shop calls you darling or love. I said, 'Thanks for having me, I'll be sure and let Daniel know what a brilliant night you've shown me,' kissed her again on the cheek and left.
I still had no idea where I was. I opened a can of beer and just headed in the first direction my feet saw fit to take me. I kept the wig on because it was starting to rain.
When I woke up again, I was at a bus stop. My forehead was stuck to the glass of the shelter - I was sitting upright in the corner with my head against it. The first thing I saw was the ground where four empty beer-cans lay, then I noticed that my mobile phone was lying next to them, face down with the battery cover and battery missing, nowhere to be seen. My first thought was sheer panic - my whole life was in that phone. Remember, this was a while ago, somewhere in my mid-twenties, long before I had a computer or broadband and an email address. I didn't even have a land-line at home because it was an unnecessary expense and besides, I wasn't really at home that much anyway. As I picked it up to find the screen all scratched, the old woman I hadn't noticed asked, 'You had a good night, son?' She was sitting beside me on the bench in the bus shelter. 'The bus to Glasgow will be here any minute, if that's where you're going,' she said, and all I could muster through my dry throat was a croaky 'Aye, cheers.' There was a little awkward silence before the bus arrived and, ever the gentleman, I let the old dear on first. When I got up to the driver, I realised I didn't have any money - there's no pockets in my pyjama trousers and all I'd had in my jacket was beer, phone and keys. As if that wasn't bad enough, I caught sight of my vague reflection in the glass of the driver's booth and noticed my odd-shaped head - I was still wearing the wig. I yanked it off quickly then tried to plead my case, explained how I'd been stranded at a stranger's house in my pyjamas, but I needn't have bothered. Before I reached the end of my plea, the old woman had walked back up, bus-fare in hand, saying 'Here you go, driver, I'll get this,' and she paid my fare. I looked her in the eyes and said sincerely, 'Thank you, thank you, this is really good of you and I don't know what to say.'
'Just you get yourself up the road and get some sleep, son,' she said and went back to her seat. I stumbled right up the back and sat down, embarrassed and humble, lost for words.
The bus took me to Buchanan Station so I made the walk down to Queen Street to get the train out to the flat. As I was walking, in the distance, I couldn't believe it at first but there she was: my ex-girlfriend. She was stumbling and shaky, obviously still drunk from a night out, just like me. I wanted to shout out, run and catch up with her or even just somehow let my presence be known, let her see me in the same state, pretend that I was doing okay. But I decided against it, in fact I even took a slight detour to avoid her, I don't know why.
When I got home, I went straight to the bedroom and stripped then slid into bed, pulling up the extra cover to keep me cosy. As I drifted off, I was thinking about my weird night and how I was looking forward to telling all my mates all about it when I woke up. And then I remembered my phone was f*****.